translations/Feminist_ninja_upgrading_intersectional_feminism_with_the_hacker_class/upgrading_intersectional_feminism_with_the_hacker_class.3.eng.srt

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Part 3:
Hacker feminism at the intersection

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In Hacker Women, Sollfrank writes:
"even within the cyberfeminist community,

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there are only a few computer
professionals and fewer nerds.

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Currently most women seem to prefer to
undertake politically engaged work

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in a purely cultural environment
and on a non-technological level.

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Women are not actively influencing
the development of hard- and software,

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and therefore are surrendering any chance to share the related power."

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That power grew to form the new dominant mode of production and took over the world,

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so ignoring it is impossible but imagining
a different world seems almost equally hard.

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Nobody talks about cyberfeminism anymore because thats just feminism now,

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Cyberspace is enmeshed with the earth

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and the techno utopianism of the 1990s
devolved into a full blown dystopia.

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Today asking someone to quit vectoralist media can be absurdly presumptuous,

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like asking a peasant to quit the feudal land or a proletarian to quit the capitalist factory.

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Class domination means
we really don't have a choice.

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To survive we are forced
to carry smartphones

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that either run on iOS (owned by Apple)
or Android (owned by Google)

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get jobs by signing up to sites like
Linked In (owned by Microsoft)

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or Amazon Mechanical Turk
or Uber (hosted on Amazon).

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To keep our jobs we are forced to sign in to apps like Whatsapp (owned by Facebook) 

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and Zoom (hosted on Amazon).

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We have to be liked on Instagram (owned by Facebook) or Github (owned by Microsoft)

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before we can sell
the fruits of our labor.

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As April Glaser puts it: "Deleting Facebook is a privilege."

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However, since our personal data is 
the source of vectoralist political power, 

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feminist slogan "the personal is political" becomes even more meaningful & important.

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We have to make it clear 

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that when we invite someone to
our feminist whatsapp group 

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and our google drive to organize our
new hashtag campaign, 

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we are inviting them

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to do voluntary work that benefits
the richest white cis men in the world 

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like Larry Page,
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

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When we invite someone
to our feminist Zoom assembly, 

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we are inviting them to use services
of a company 

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that infringes the freedom of assembly to Uighur and Palestinian people 

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on the servers of a corporation that provides Artificial Intelligence and facial recognition 

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to the racist police force of the country with the highest prison population in the world.

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There is no good reason for using
vectoralist apps

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to organize ourselves and our emancipatory
struggles, 

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because there are free open source alternatives

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for almost every popular vectoralist software

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and there is a federation of decentralized
public servers 

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for free open source social media that we can use right now.

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We can use IRC, Jabber, Matrix etc. instead of Whatsapp,

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Nextcloud instead of Drive,

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Mastodon instead of
Twitter and Meet Jitsi instead of Zoom.

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These FOSS apps are not just as good,
but they are better,

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not just ethically and politically

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but also because they dont try to mess with
our psychology through algorithms

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and thats why they need much less resources, which is better for the earth.

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As intersectional feminists we should be aware that we are all cyborg hackers

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and we have different response-abilities
depending on our situatedness.

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Intersectional feminism upgraded with
hacker class consciousness can and should

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be an entry point for people to learn 

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how vectoralism intersects with
all forms of oppression

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and which tools to use for
hacking them in a revolutionary way.

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To begin with, we should differentiate
between organization and outreach.

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For the purposes of organization
and for personal/political communication,

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we should use free and open source
software, not just because it's more secure 

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but also for liberating ourselves from vectoralist exploitation

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and empowering each other.

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For outreach it might still make sense
to use vectoralist platforms

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until most of the population is not there anymore

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but doing this successfully already requires a well organized hack,

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otherwise we would be just blocked like Signal ads were blocked by Facebook.

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On a personal level, we can start
by migrating to foss operating systems

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installing peer to peer and darknet apps, 
getting a nextcloud, a matrix, a mastodon

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and even hosting our own servers,

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but we won't get much use of these if we don't have a community there.

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Also the learning curve is much lower
when it's approached collectively.

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In the end,

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the greater part of the work is convincing our communities to come along with us.

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There is no technical solution
to a social problem.

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For any of these FOSS to start genuine change, we need to reach a critical mass

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with network effect.

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To host and facilitate
a digital mass migration, 

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existing infrastructures
wouldn't be enough,

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we would need to
invest in decentralized infrastructure

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and disperse the cloud
by reclaiming our data.

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To spread this idea
and turn it into reality,

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we can organize
feminist hacker literacy campaigns,

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not just for coding
but for everything we need

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to liberate and maintain our cyborg lives, 

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like system administration, telecom engineering, hardware assembly and repair, 

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and most importantly, wetware, which is 
the organic part of our cyborg bodies.

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The intersection of feminist and hacker politics goes back to witches 

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who were hunted
for having the power of knowledge 

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detrimental to capitalist racist cisheteropatriarchy.

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Half century ago, when abortion
was illegal in the United States,

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underground Jane Collective reappropriated the knowledge of performing abortions,

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to train and maintain a feminist network of illegal practitioners.

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In 2001,

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Gender Changers Academy started doing feminist hack workshops in Amsterdam

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which then toured cities in different countries

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under the name Eclectic Tech Carnival.

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In 2014, Feminist Principles of the Internet
were drafted in Malaysia, 

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meanwhile in Catalonia, TransHackFeminist convergence featured workshops 

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ranging from do-it-yourself
gynecology to creating feminist servers.

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Feminist principles of the internet
on feministinternet.org

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is a good starting point for imagining
a feminist internet

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but as it says on the Anarchaserver:
"A feminist internet also requires 

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self-managed and autonomous
feminist servers."

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"This is about regaining control
and gaining autonomy 

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in the access and management
of our data and collective memories.

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It is also about being able
to have feminist mailing lists,

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pads, wikis, content management systems,
social networks

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and any other online services managed
by feminist tech collectives.

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It is also of course
about continuing to argue that

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social justice in technologically driven
environments

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needs a more gender and culturally
diverse presence in general."

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Today there are a few feminist hacklabs and feminist servers

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that are doing a very important job by setting paradigms and leading by example.

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What we need urgently is
the popularization of these practices

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by sharing material, technical
and emotional resources.

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To have our own infrastructure,
we have to make a collective decision

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to invest in it.

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In the article "Feminist autonomous infrastructure: from zombies to ninjas" 

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it explains how volunteering risks invisibilizing labor

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and donation campaigns are not enough
to sustain feminist infrastructure projects.

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The article titled "Feminists are building
their own technology to organise 

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but where are funders?" explains how
a feminist server project ceased to exist 

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because it lacked proper funding.

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"The internet, like
the streets, needs to be reclaimed.

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We can build new spaces of engagement, organizing and transformation 

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but in order to achieve this,

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we need funding that can ensure
those building the feminist internet

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that they can make decisions
over where their knowledge goes."

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A server can cost less
than the cheapest smartphone

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or cheaper
if you use a second hand computer

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but we also need the funding
to spread the idea 

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and give people the time and space
to learn, exercise and develop.

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In cities like Barcelona where
every neighborhood have feminist groups,

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every neighborhood can have a feminist
hacklab with servers that federate.

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For neighborhoods that don't
have a secure physical space, 

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bigger feminist organizations like Ca La Dona
can share VPS and other services.

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Every feminist group should have access
to feminist servers, 

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if they're too small or ephemeral and can't afford to have their own,

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they should be able to find help from other feminist collectives that share services.

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Bigger feminist organizations in
more privileged parts of the world should

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also have programs to share services with
the feminists from rest of the world.

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Feminist infrastructure and servers
should be seen as a necessity,

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especially for separatist feminist groups.

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We can't have truly no-mixto spaces
on vectoralist platforms, because there

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even our close groups and personal
messages are exploited by white cis men.

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On the other hand,
imagine an internet without cis men at all,

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and believe that
we can create it together.

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To realize that dream we don't need 
a new technology, we need a new culture.

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Hacker class consciousness must be a part of our intersectional feminist consciousness.

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We can update our
consciousness raising practices

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by including conversations about how vectoralism effects us personally 

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and sharing the knowledge of
how to hack it for good

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with care
and not condescension.

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We can throw crypto install parties
combined with tupperware/sex parties

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where we demonstrate
signal blocking pouches, tails sticks,

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single board computers, 
linux phones, etc.

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When we do these parties
at each others homes,

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we can help set up home servers and labs.

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We can make signal blocking
purses for smart devices fashionable.

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Take that textile back
from military machis.

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If we do it on our own
we could be singled out, 

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so we should do it as a movement

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and exercise it as our right
to not be accessible 24/7.

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Our culture should value a repairable
cheap phone with killswitches 

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more than
the latest most expensive phone

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that doesn't allow a battery removal
without breaking the warranty.

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Meanwhile, we can't forget
where the lithium, koltan

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and everthing else
that goes into a computer comes from, 

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the people who mine it, carry it, process
it, assemble it.

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We must interfere with technology at
every layer

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from internet service provisions
to supply-production chains

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to stop reproducing injustice
and destroying our planet.

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To be able to take good care
of each other and the earth, 

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we must cultivate our response-abilities
and radically change our culture.

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The future will be feminist
or there won’t be future!